Striking a Civil Tone in Simpson Civil Case

I’ve been visiting the Simpson civil trial recently, pondering the differences between the current event and Trial I.

Some of you may say that O.J.’s first trial, in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, while legally concluded, never really ended. That’s because you’re still watching veterans of Trial I replaying their pasts and clinging to the spotlight, old actors hungry for celebrity.

Some days, you can’t turn on your television set without seeing a Simpson trial veteran reliving the old days, usually to hawk a book. Unfortunately, because of TV’s enormous hunger for outrageous behavior, the Trial I veterans have made a spectator sport of turning on one another in unseemly feuds.

Cochran vs. Shapiro. Darden vs. Cochran. Fuhrman vs. the jury. All of them eager to get a spot with Barbara, Geraldo, Diane and the O.J. network, CNN.

To make matters worse, the media often find the replay more interesting than the current trial. Old journalistic hands love fighting the last war.

That’s what was going on in the background this week on the day I picked to visit the Santa Monica courthouse.

A story in Los Angeles magazine by Mike Fleeman, an Associated Press reporter who covered the first trial and is assigned to the second as well, had quoted friends of Simpson friend Bob Kardashian as saying Kardashian was now having doubts about O.J. For some of the television reporters, that became the story of the day--maybe even the week. In fact, it helped catapult Kardashian into an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC tonight.

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But the action in the Santa Monica courtroom is much more important.

The room resembles Judge Lance A. Ito’s Criminal Courts Building courtroom--same county issued tables, same bleak linoleum tile floor. The atmosphere, however, is far different.

During jury selection in the criminal trial, the courtroom and hallways were tense and crowded places, where lawyers attacked one another and established the themes that were to shape the long months ahead. It was during this period that the defense, in court and in a news conference, accused the prosecution of targeting prospective black jurors for dismissal, foreshadowing the way race came to dominate the trial.

This isn’t happening in Santa Monica. Part of the restraint, of course, is due to Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki’s gag order, forbidding lawyers to speak to the press about the trial.

But just from watching the attorneys for a couple of days, I think their own courtroom demeanor deserves some of the credit.

True, the lawyers have squabbled. They’re intense competitors who won’t give an inch, and this undoubtedly will become more evident as the battle heats up.

But right now, at this crucial jury selection stage of the trial, they raise their objections in soft voices, briefly and without attacking the integrity of their foes. Old-fashioned virtues unknown to the first trial--restraint, dignity and respect--reign so far in Santa Monica.

Chief Simpson attorney Robert C. Baker is a tall gray-haired man with a deep voice and polite manner. “‘I’m sorry to have interrupted you,” he told a prospective juror last week. “‘I apologize.” Spare with words, Baker sits back impassively when he is not questioning jurors. Occasionally, there are glimpses of a trial lawyer’s intensity. He writes notes with furious energy. And the other day, he gave a colleague a sharp look after the man asked a long, rambling question that brought a rebuke from Judge Fujisaki. For the most part, Baker hides his emotions behind the calm, reassuring manner of a family lawyer you’d call to straighten out your dad’s estate if he died and left his finances in a mess.

Equally civil is the lawyer who has taken the lead among the several attorneys representing the families of the victims. He’s Daniel M. Petrocelli who, like Baker, is a veteran of big-time civil cases.

Petrocelli is a slight, slender man, with dark hair, graying at the sides. His voice is thinner than Baker’s, and higher pitched. He also seems more tightly wound, possibly because he’s not as good as hiding his emotions. But like his opponent, Petrocelli makes his objections softly, sticking to the legal issue.

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This is a strikingly civil trial, in words and actions as well as in legal form, conducted with respect for the individuals involved and for the legal process, at least for now. I hope this will continue and give the country a better picture of L.A. law.

It’s the way the first trial should have been run. But, as we watch the antics of the Trial I veterans, we know that would have been impossible.